As we noted a month or so ago, we were gifted with a fantastic year old subscription to Amazon Prime. If you’re not familiar with Amazon Prime, it’s basically a special club through Amazon.com that gives you free shipping on any size purchase as well as a year’s instant video of their fantastic library of movies, tv shows and such… and you can get a monthly free download of a ebook for your Kindle or tablet devices!
We have been really enjoying the video on demand for certain, but the really neat thing is that we can order just about ANYTHING on Amazon.com and it is delivered within two days to our doorstep! No more driving 30+ miles to get a good deal on grocery items and just about anything.
That has been amazing and surely has saved us a small fortune in cash, gas and time. Well worth the $79 yearly fee.
We were paying $10 a month for Netflix. That’s $120 right there. So the Prime video alone is worth the $79. Saves a gal $40 over the year. And they have a ton of stuff… no problem finding anything to watch at any time.
Now, I know, you can get free shipping if you spend $35 or more. So why get Prime for that?
Well… if you are like us, it’s hard to always get to a $35 order. And then you end up usually spending a bit more because you HAVE to get to the free shipping status. Works great for the merchants, but ends up making it harder on our budget to justify. So, we end up buying locally at the expensive grocery or driving to the big city and wasting time and money. A sort of loose, loose situation.
But now? Oh my gosh! Get low on paper towels? Order them. I got that big pack of nice basic paper towels for $11. Shipped free. We don’t use a ton of paper towels, but I do like having them around for really messy things… That bundle will last us at least 2 or 3 months. And it’s done. Here, delivered and as a bonus, we get a nice big cardboard box for our garden plans and some nice packing material we can reuse for our own mail order companies! And we didn’t waste time and gas to get it.
We seem to order once or twice a week now. Run low on dish soap? Order it… $6 for good soap, a two pack… will last us awhile. Toilet paper? 20 rolls of Scott 1,000 sheets… $ 12. Cheaper than our dollar store!! And delivered! Free…
We’ve gotten a lot of things this month. All stuff we needed, very little fluff. (Okay, I did order a book on needle punching that I guess I REALLY didn’t need, but it was on sale for $5.99 and my girls got me a needle punch for Christmas, so it was neat to add that in an order!!!) We’ve ordered, coconut oil for cooking, paper products, shampoo, dish soap, a couple Christmas presents… dog and cat food… pancake mix, Soda Stream mixes, underwear (yeah, that was fun, easy too!), art supplies, and a couple books. Oh yes, and a DVD for Maggie, and a video game.
And an ax. Yep, a fancy Fiskars X25 firewood chopping ax. And it was $7 cheaper than the big box stores, and delivered free. Awesome!!!
Now, I will admit, at first, I thought… well, someone is paying for this. The shipping costs money, somewhere. And yes, it does. My UPS man has to stop at my house.
But here’s the catch. He goes by every day. He just has to stop for a moment or two, pop the box on the porch and continue on his way. That is far far less gas cost then me getting in our old station wagon and driving 30 miles to the big city. Way less. And even if we were somehow able to just store up all our errands and do just one or two trips to the big town, it’s still saving time and effort, which has a price. It keeps our UPS fellow in a job, which is nice. And it’s so much more efficient for him to service all our rural communities on a daily route than to have all of us driving about.
It’s like the new modern day Wells Fargo Wagon a-coming down the track!
We’ve been careful not to just get silly things. And trust me, you could go nuts online… there is just everything and anything. But we watch the prices and read the reviews. The reviews are fantastic! We have avoided a few real dogs online… things that we thought might be a good thing and then found that the reviews were less than favorable. And we have had to return one item and it was a breeze! They even had the truck stop and grab it, and no cost for the return postage. Love it.
We are finding ourselves checking all needs online first. See if it’s available (usually is) and if we feel the price is good. We have a guideline for our purchases. If it is at cost or up to $2 more, we use Amazon Prime. I figure the time savings alone would make up for a wee bit more in cost. But not too much. And yet, if you poke around, every item seems to be available from several different merchants through the Amazon family, so if you don’t like it at $15 an item, you can usually find it for $13 or $12 or even less! A couple books we’ve gotten NEW were cheaper than Ebay used! And free shipping! Crazy.
Our only issue so far? Our crazy winter weather has been a little bit of a stinker and during bad storms when there is a Level Three Snow Emergency issue, UPS doesn’t come out this way. So a few packages right around a storm got delayed a day or two. But hey, we would have not gotten out anyway, or risked a ticket… and that is hardly the fault of anyone, save Mother Nature!
I still do try and frequent our small town merchants, especially the hardware and feed store, as well as local farmers and such for our produce and such when we can. But I love not being tempted by the whole ‘shopping’ experience at the big box places where I apparently have weak personal control and so often am swayed by this sale or that special and seem to always come home with a little extra!!! And to be honest, I’m not one to enjoy shopping just for the sake of it. I’m much more comfortable knowing that I need THIS and then finding THIS and being done. Works for us!
So, to wrap this one up… we approve! It’s an awesome resource for the homesteading family. It helps us to save a little dough, get good quality products that will serve our needs well, and keeps us here, on the farm and not wasting time and gas driving all over the place. And I suspect, it will only continue to improve. We’ve seen a lot of business resources that will help us grow on there, supplies and such that make it easier to make a living out here. Amazon Prime is one good tool for your homestead box of tricks!!!! Yup!!!
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